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/448/ Foreign Agents, Quiet Oligarchs & Neverending History ft. Hans Gutbrod (Patreon)

Published:
2024-11-01 21:31:32
Imported:
2024-11
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  • 373375927.mp4

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Content

On Georgia's pivotal elections and its post-Soviet history.

[Full episode only for patrons]

Hans Gutbrod, who has been working in the Caucasus region since 1999 and now teaches at Ilia State University in Tblisi, talks to Alex about Georgia's choice between the EU and Russia. We discuss:

Who is Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose wealth is equal to 1/4 of GDP?

What is the ruling Georgian Dream's pitch to voters, and how has it turned 'rightward'?

Did Georgia witness the end of history, or merely the de-development of the post-Soviet years?

How has civil society become dominated by NGOs, and is this a problem?

Can Georgia flourish in a multipolar world, acting as an entrepôt between East and West?

Links:

In Georgia, a National Election Is a Geopolitical Struggle, Bryan Gigantino, Jacobin

Telling Time the New Way: 17 Years of Reform, Hans Gutbrod, Civil Georgia

Macbeth in the Caucasus: Omnipotence and Loneliness - Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream, Hans Gutbrod (PDF)

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Comments

Christoph Iselin

I mean, we all know which car washing station Alex is coming from, but the dismissive attitude toward anti-corruption is always a little baffling to me. I also disagree with the "anti"-anti-corrpution take from #297 with Fogel. First of all, cracking down on corruption is very much about the distribution of power and resources (see Branko Milanovic, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024000612 or Capitalism alone). Second, you surely can dismiss corruption as a petty bourgeois issue—a concern of middle-class people who resent having to pay $1,000 for their daughter’s university admission or $10 for a ‘speeding’ ticket. But how exactly do working-class people or the poor benefit from being unable to attend university because they can't bribe the director? Anyway, great episode.

Pickibun

I frankly found this episode a frustrating listening experience. Alex did a good job of interviewing the guest but I thought Gutbrod’s argument was consistently unpersuasive. It seemed to me that he more or less dismissed the issue of foreign NGOs and the apparent interest by Western politicians in cementing Georgia’s place in their coalition. The conversation missed, for example, to mention the fact that EU-politician have reportedly been participating and campaigning for the opposition party... His explanation of Georgian Dream’s electoral successes also follows standard centrist consensus: old and out of touch voters have been scared into voting against their interests by an authoritarian leader. Hell, he goes even further by labelling Georgian Dream as ’totalitarian’! Where is the class analysis which takes the Georgian Dream voters interest into consideration? Is the description not strikingly similar to Brexit and Trump voters post-2015/2016? I am not saying that Georgian Dream is a vehicle for democracy or even increased autonomy for Georgia – I just want to point out the inadequacy of the analysis which did not venture beyond the ‘reactionary masses’ framework. I was also confused by his discussion of Georgian leftism. On the one hand, the left does not exist in any real political sense. On the other hand, there are Georgian leftists when left-wing Eurosceptics need to be scolded for being ‘Stalinist’. Is this not the same pattern of disciplining which has been used to silence leftist critics of the war in Ukraine for not being cognizant of Ukrainan ‘voices’? I feel that there is still much to learn about the Georgian elections and society…